Sanzo/Goku Fanfiction
“Sick?” Sanzo repeated, one eye squinted incredulously.
“It’s rare,” Hakkai admitted, “but it does happen. Did happen.”
They both glanced toward the feverish brunet tucked into bed and watched him shiver, even under a pile of blankets.
“Can’t you fix it?”
“You know my qi doesn’t work that way, Sanzo.” Hakkai shook his head. “We can have someone at the front desk contact a physician for something to lower the fever and ease Goku’s discomfort. Aside from that, this is just one of those things which will have to run its course, I’m afraid.”
Frowning, the blond laid a hand across Goku’s forehead. The teen’s hair was damp with sweat.
“I can rest in the back’a Jeep if I have to, Sanzo,” Goku croaked weakly. “So don’t you dare ditch me here!”
“Idiot,” Sanzo huffed. “Just shut up and get better.” After a moment, he looked up to catch Hakkai’s eye. “Go ahead and get that doctor. No point in dragging this out longer than we have to.”
Hakkai nodded and moved for the door. “Shall I send up some tea, as well?” he asked with an ill-concealed smile. “And perhaps that book of mine you had expressed interest in?”
Sanzo scowled at him, but didn’t refuse.
~*^*~
“You goddamn shit-for-brains monkey!”
“Ow! Sanzo, what the hell...” Goku grabbed his stinging shoulder, and figured the nasty blow to the head he’d taken earlier was the only reason Sanzo was forgoing his usual favorite target for the harisen.
“I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t need you protecting me!” the blond snarled, an arm curled around what were probably a couple bruised ribs, but he hadn’t let Hakkai near enough to be certain, not yet.
“Who told you to pull such a moronic stunt?!” Sanzo demanded, furiously. “It was reckless and stupid and--”
“And saved your ungrateful hide,” Gojyo put in, cleaning an ear with his little finger as he casually leaned his weight against Shakujou.
“That’s not the point!” Sanzo bellowed. “The point is that you,” he punctuated the accusation with another stinging whack of his fan to Goku’s other shoulder, “are a brainless--”
“It’s interesting how reduced his vocabulary becomes when he’s worried,” Hakkai mused sotto voce.
“Hah! The true power of Sanzo-sama’s affection is pretty terrifying,” the redhead agreed.
“I can hear you bastards...!”
“Sanzo!” Goku finally exclaimed, catching the monk’s wrist and pushing it, and the fan, aside. Before Sanzo could protest, he’d wrapped a strong, wiry arm around the man’s shoulders and jerked him close.
“...I’m just really, really glad you’re okay,” Goku sighed raggedly against his neck. After a long moment, he felt the tension in Sanzo’s body gradually lessen, even if the voice in Goku’s ear remained grim.
“Do not ever do that again, Goku. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” Goku promised, though neither of them believed it for a second.
~*^*~
“You should’a seen it,” Goku informed Sanzo gleefully as he trailed alongside the priest. “Gojyo was so freaked out, I thought I was gonna piss my pants laughin’!”
“Pfft. How old are you?” Sanzo wanted to know. For all his outward disdain, however, Goku could tell Sanzo was hiding a smirk behind his cigarette.
“Not as old as Gojyo. An’ he started it.”
“Point.”
“Man, I got him good...oh, hey, Sanzo, can we get orange peel chicken, can we? With noodles with the little sesame seeds in them?”
“We just ate dinner before we left the inn,” the blond reminded him, his expression deadpan. “Specifically, so you wouldn’t waste the time we’re supposed to use to purchase supplies by dragging me all over the market.”
“But Gojyo grabbed all my favorites, right as I was reaching for them!” Goku insisted. “It’s like he was out to get me!”
“And I haven’t the faintest idea why that would be true,” Sanzo remarked with a roll of his eyes.
“Awwww~”
“’Che. Don’t you dare start, you stupid, hollow-legged monkey.”
“What about dessert?” Goku wheedled, changing tactics with lightning speed. “We didn’t get any dessert. Look, that stand over there has that sweet coconut-mango rice you like!” Catching the monk’s sleeve, Goku tugged him across the street.
It was a gentler, more patiently cajoling tug than the full-fisted ‘grab and yank’ of Goku’s youth, and Sanzo grudgingly found himself all the more willing to acquiesce because of it.
~*^*~
“Stop moping,” Sanzo ordered. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“But I was right there!” Goku shouted back, a fist pressed hard against his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut. Against the threat of tears, against his anger and frustration, Goku didn’t know, it was just... “Those kids were countin’ on us, countin’ on me, and I just let them--” He voice died on him, then, and he growled at the injustice of it. He’d promised them they’d be safe!
The room was silent for so long, Goku wondered if Sanzo had gotten fed up with him and left, until he felt the bed dip under the weight of another person. Glancing up warily, Goku watched the priest light a cigarette and waited for him to say something. Sanzo took a long drag--so long, Goku had to wonder how he didn’t choke on all the smoke--and when he exhaled, they watched together as the stream rose to furl against the ceiling.
“It sucks,” Sanzo let him know bluntly. “But there was nothing you could do. We got there too late. You did the best you could, and you’ll just have to find comfort in the fact that those bastards paid with their lives.”
“...So that’s it?” Goku scoffed, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of a hand. “It happens; get over it?”
Sanzo drew a foot up against the mattress to rest his arm across his knee. “That’s about the size of it. You can’t hold onto the deaths you feel responsible for, Goku, or you’ll drown in them.” He took another contemplative pull on his Marlboro. “The past is useless. All we can do is look to the future, and tell ourselves we won’t make the same mistakes twice.”
“When we get to India...” Goku trailed off, unsure how to complete the thought. His hands fisted, though, as he considered the fact that this was just one more item on a long list of grievances those who had started the Minus Wave would have to answer for. It wouldn’t be the last, either.
“When we get to India,” Sanzo agreed, his eyes on the window, and the moon over Goku’s shoulder.
~*^*~
“It’s probably the only way to beat ‘em, Sanzo!” Goku insisted, shrugging off the blond’s hand.
“The Muten sutra--” Anything else Sanzo might have added was drowned out by another bone-rattling explosion on some lower floor, and he wondered if those other two idiots would bring the whole place down around all their ears before they managed to take out the only partially-resurrected Demon King.
“--will hafta catch me, first!”
Goku was serious about this. He’d probably do it, Sanzo reflected, even if expressly forbidden. Goku knew as well as he did their options, and the stakes involved.
“Are you fast enough?” he asked finally, and by the expression on Goku’s face, the little bastard already considered this argument won. Sanzo hadn’t been there, the last time Goku became the Seiten Taisei, but vague comments Hakkai had dropped since then suggested Goku had achieved a level of power that was truly unsettling.
“Gojyo said I caught’a bullet,” the brunet admitted. “With my teeth.”
Sanzo gave the monkey a terse nod, then, even if it was against his better judgment. This fucking thing was bigger than all of them, goddamnit, and all things taken into account, Goku’s unlimited form was looking like their best bet right now.
“If you lose against Ukoku, you’d better hope you die,” the blond threatened darkly as he stepped past the younger man to continue down the corridor.
It was Goku, this time, who stopped him with a hand on his wrist, and Sanzo hadn’t realized how tightly he was gripping his Smith & Wesson until Goku’s thumb came to rest against the straining tendons there. The brunet’s eyes flashed with determination, his mouth having taken an uncharacteristically serious set to it.
“I won’t disappear, Sanzo, no matter what.”
It was too bad, Sanzo thought cynically, that sheer determination to live made no difference against the rapacious pull of the Muten sutra, and he almost said so, but thought better of it.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he muttered instead, shaking his arm free.
“I’m gonna keep this one,” Goku assured the monk.
~*^*~
Goku had seen a raccoon once, sitting in the middle of the road as they were driving through the woods at dusk. Hakkai hadn’t noticed it until it was almost too late and had to swerve at the last second, pissing off Sanzo and Gojyo, but Goku had always wondered why the raccoon just stood there without moving a muscle, Jeep’s headlights reflected in its eyes, when it had to know it was gonna get run over.
Sanzo had the same look that raccoon did on his face right now.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Goku gave an uncomfortable laugh. “I mean, after everything in India, I just thought you might wanna...” He trailed off at the scowl working its way around the corners of Sanzo’s mouth. “...know?”
“Why the hell would I want to know something like that?” Sanzo exploded. “Who said you shouldn’t keep those sorts of things to yourself, huh?!” He struck Goku hard over the head with his harisen once, then a couple more times for good measure.
“Ow--damnit, it--but Hakkai ‘n Gojyo said--”
“Oh, Hakkai and Gojyo!” Sanzo whapped him once more, really putting some force into it. “What I want to know is what possessed your feeble monkey brain, that you would think those two morons--”
“Ow!” Goku protested, his arms raised protectively over his head. “C’mon, Sanzo, all you had to do was say ‘no,’ and I wasn’t ever gonna bring it up again!” And now that Goku thought about it, Sanzo was definitely super-pissed, but he hadn’t said “no.”
“Huhn!” the monk snorted. “As if anything with you would be so easy!”
“So try it and see,” Goku suggested, his tone kept carefully reasonable in the interest of self-preservation, but his stomach felt like it was doing flips. Sanzo still hadn’t said “no.”
“What would be the fucking point?” the blond seethed, and he looked as if he wanted to hit Goku again. “Everything I say goes in one ear and out the other, you’re so goddamn--”
Goku darted forward and kissed him then, because Sanzo said far too many mean, grumpy things, and if he was going to get yelled at, he damn well wanted to have done something to deserve it.
It was kind of desperately awkward, and not exactly on-target, but Sanzo had stopped yelling. And because Goku liked to make a habit of taking a mile when Sanzo gave him an inch, he pressed his tongue inside the older man’s mouth, sought clumsily, daringly, until he felt the brush of another against his own and ohhhh, it tasted a little like stale cigarettes but he didn’t care because it made his skin feel hot all over, his spine tingled like electricity, and it was Sanzo.
With his hands he tilted the monk’s head just a bit in the way he’d once caught Gojyo at it, kissing some nameless woman in some nameless town, and Sanzo actually let him do it, though he was tense beneath Goku’s fingers. With the slight change of angle, Sanzo’s mouth fit against his just that much better, tighter, and at the same moment Goku realized the blond’s tongue was pushing his own back into his mouth and following it, he was also grabbed roughly under the chin with one hand, while another fisted in the front of his shirt.
They sort of stumbled against the nearest wall and Goku inhaled sharply at the suddenness of it, at the way Sanzo hemmed him in and leaned down to kiss him so forcefully, Goku almost forgot he was the one who had started this.
“Sa-Sanzo,” he breathed when he finally had the chance, but could think of nothing to add, could hardly think at all. Strands of Sanzo’s fine, golden hair had somehow made their way into his mouth, and Goku couldn’t help the stupid grin that broke over his face, or the tightening of his arms around the monk.
“Sanzo,” he repeated, because he liked the way the word felt on his tongue, almost as good as the man himself. “I really, really do like you. Um, a lot.”
“Alright already, I get it,” Sanzo grunted, avoiding the brunet’s gaze.
“...So it’s ‘yes,’ right, and not ‘no?’ ‘Cuz I just wanna be sure. Gojyo said I better be sure, or you’d probably shoot off my--”
“Goku.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the hell up.”
~*^*~